Tooling Update

BMW Invests in Stamping Process-Planning Software

BMW’s Cost Engineering Group in Munich, Germany, soon will upgrade its ability to determine optimum process layouts by investing in Formingsuite Process Planner software from Forming Technologies Inc. (FTI), Burlington, Ontario, Canada. The FTI software will help BMW engineers create process plans and predict the number of operations, and then calculate die load, press size, tonnage and energy. It also enables die costing as well as calculation of severity indexes to reflect the complexity of operations for progressive and transfer dies.